No LRT: Service citywide to be shuttered Saturday for Thales signal testing

Fleetwood Mac fans planning to take the LRT to Saturday’s concert at Rogers Place will have to go their own way.

Citizens will see trains running up and down the tracks on Saturday, but they won’t be able to ride them because Thales Canada, the company contracted to complete a signalling system for the Metro Line, is doing testing.

Replacement bus service will be running, and motorists and pedestrians might experience longer wait times at train crossings, Craig McKeown, the director of engineering and management with Edmonton Transit, said Thursday.

“We’re working co-operatively with them. We’ll continue to work co-operatively with them until Dec. 4,” he said.

McKeown said the focus is on the end result, not on the testing interim results; the city is still working on a backup plan for a signalling system in the event Thales can’t deliver a finished product by Dec. 4.

The Metro Line is currently running at full speed. But it’s not allowing trains to weave between each other in the tunnel. That means every third train coming from the south has to divert to NAIT. For passengers, that means trains are overcrowded and shorter than usual from the south — and there are up to 10-minute waits during peak hours in the north

If Thales does pass it tests, that won’t change the train service for commuters stepping onto the LRT on Dec. 5.

The city will conduct testing of its own for “several months,” McKeown said, and then, pending those results, look at bringing the Metro Line up to it full function.

The plan for Saturday is to test current service levels, and then ramp up to 10-minute frequencies on the Metro Line between Health Sciences Station and NAIT. They’ll also be testing five-minute frequencies on the Capital Line.

But tests for running the Metro Line at five-minute frequencies and to try out automatic train control won’t happen Saturday — those tests will be run during off-service hours in the run-up to the Dec. 4 deadline.

McKeown said the testing date was picked many months ago, and that the city tried its best to schedule around special events like concerts.